Friday, January 29, 2010

According to the Agence France Presse (no link), the remainder of the tickets for the Dodgers' two games in Taiwan this spring training sold out in six hours:

Tickets for two exhibition games featuring the Los Angeles Dodgers in Taiwan in March sold out in just six hours, an organiser said Friday.

Fans swamped the Internet for 20,000 tickets priced from 500 to 5,000 Taiwan dollars (15 to 156 US) which went on sale Thursday, causing the ticketing system to go down temporarily, said organiser Bros Sports Marketing Inc.

Taiwan is counting on the star power of the Major League outfit to lift fans' spirits after the island's favourite sport was hit by a string of match-fixing scandals. [...]

Taiwanese authorities last year launched an investigation into the latest match-fixing allegations, resulting in the arrest of six bookies and former players.

Prosecutors have declined to say how many players are suspected of involvement in the alleged scam but so far more than 20 have been questioned in the ongoing probe.